


A Few Notes On Biology And Culture

by GuesssWho



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Culture, Fictional document, Gen, Headcanon, Other, Yeerks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-21
Updated: 2015-01-21
Packaged: 2018-03-08 11:28:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3207518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuesssWho/pseuds/GuesssWho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some thoughts on the nature of the Yeerks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Few Notes On Biology And Culture

**Author's Note:**

> As the following treatise was originally published during my time on the Human homeworld, in the days when I was first getting used to the end of the war, much of it is written in a matter that best explains things to Humans unused to the existence of real aliens among them. Please keep that in mind when reading.

The common Human is likely to have many questions about aliens, especially Yeerks, in these strange days. I am unlikely to be able to answer them all, and I cannot deny my opinions are biased--how could they be otherwise, when I have lived through such a war? A war that was caused by blind arrogance on both sides, and a complete inability to think outside the box. If only some Andalite had thought of using artificial bodies for the Yeerks back in the beginning, or if one had been allocated the resources to build them!

An Andalite it would have had to be, for when they arrived the Yeerks were still in the stone age. The Yeerks had never fought, for there was enough light for them all. They had never been jealous, for their only commodity was use of Gedds (our original hosts) and they had yet to think that a Gedd should belong to one Yeerk, not the whole pool network. It was a good life, aside from having to fight predators. And then the creatures came in ships unimaginable, and they were disgusted with these slugs that tried to talk. Even the ones that tried to teach the Yeerks also tried to ignore what they were talking with, and the effect on the collective Yeerk psyche was immense.

That is the reason that Yeerks are so obsessed with Andalites, the reason that those Yeerks who prefer artificial hosts to going _nothlit_ designed a machine with four legs, two arms and a tail with a multitool at the tip, the reason that the Vissers were all arrogance and scorn, the reason that the common Yeerks seethed with carefully-hidden self-hatred. It was the Andalites who gave this to us.

Yes, us. Not so long ago I was Sub-Visser Nine, who had been 'promoted' into the Hell that was being personal secretary to Esplin 9466 Primary* the year before. I can only imagine that my promotion was an attempt at murder by some higher-up who suspected me of sympathizing with the Peace Movement. And if there's a better way to make someone out-and-out join the movement than forcing her*** to work side-by-side with that maniac I have yet to find it, so if I hadn't been a sympathizer when I was promoted I certainly was by the end of the War!

*Note for Humans and others who may not know; Esplin 9466 Primary** is better known as Visser Three and then Visser One, and was at least as horrible to his subordinates as to his enemies. Until the open war for Earth, which he championed, he is believed to have actually killed more Yeerks and hosts than the rest of the fighting combined.

**A further explanation of Yeerk names can be found later on.

***I am not actually female. Yeerks have a reproductive system unlike any form of Earth life, and can be said to have either three genders or no gender at all, depending on who you ask. I have, however, tended towards female hosts, and have acquired some sympathies towards the plight of the Human female in a male-dominated society, although that is outside the scope of this essay.

I am no scientist, and already I'm sure I have added things that no formal treatise would have. But considering that when I was born my people had no written language and couldn't reliably count past five*, I would like to think that I am doing fairly well.

*I know that must sound ancient to most of you, but I am only about 50 Earth years old. I sometimes have trouble calculating things like that--from dawn to dusk on the homeworld is almost three days here, and I won't even get into the other ratios--but recording the number of years caught on about a hundred years before the Andalites arrived, though I only know that because the year it was invented was Generation One and they landed in Generation Four-Fives-of-Five-And-A-Bit.

We weren't like Hork-Bajir*, mind you. We were clever, eager to learn and perceptive. But we had nothing to count except days and years, which barely mattered to beings living in small ponds, and Gedds weren't exactly good at penmanship.

*Hork-Bajir are well-known for having one child of Human intelligence in a generation, with the rest being as dumb as rocks. They're sweet-tempered, though, and I always felt sorry for them. Which is probably why I got 'promoted.'

I'm sure most Humans are curious about the biology of all aliens, but I can only describe my own species with any reliability. First, however, it is best to forget the very concept of the animal. Many sapient aliens are close enough to animals that the term can be used interchangably, but Yeerks are in many ways a hybrid of animal and plant. We absorb Kandrona's rays through our skins, and use our mouths to drink and collect sediment drifting in the water. This is a basic fact that most people know about us, but the implications never seem to register. Maybe we should dress up as water lilies in future.*

*Yes, we have got a sense of humor. More than Andalites do, at least, not that that's really very hard. (Or hard at all, in fact.) The Empire tended to discourage humor, though.**

**Dictatorships generally do, because if people start to laugh at the dictators then the fear that keeps everyone in line might dissipate. Sometimes I wonder what the Andalite government must be like . . .

Much of the Yeerk body is covered in electrical nodes, which can be used to 'hack' any brain that uses electrical signals. This was originally used to make our hosts transport us between pools, often for mating. Yeerk mating has a large effect on our psyche and culture, but in almost the opposite way than it has in humans. Like the octopus on Earth, our kind dies in mating, although for different reasons. The three Yeerks that come together to have children quite literally come together, fusing into a large ball that shatters into roughly ten thousand grubs.

This is why there are often quite long numbers after a Yeerk's name: the name itself is taken from the parents' names, two or three letters from each, and the number is for the individual grub. Some of the larger grubs may divide again, forming Primaries, Secondaries and so on. The result of this is that family among Yeerks has almost no meaning except in chance friendships, but a Yeerk is almost never alone. The closeness of a Human family is impossible, with even twins often ignoring each other*, but the loneliness of an orphan is almost unimaginable. Both aspects of Human nature created more than a few sympathizers in the war, and there are _nothlit_ Yeerks who chose to join their hosts families.

*Or worse. The Visser became so unhinged and paranoid in later years that he decided his twin was out to get him and banned it from the pools, reducing it to desperation and cannibalism. It is now kept in a dedicated insane asylum pool on the homeworld.

This is, of course, only an overview, and only of one species. To explain the cultures of the galaxy in full is a task that all our gods would have trouble with. If any reader wishes to ask, however, I would be glad to hear from you.

Recorded by Slasca 3993, Sulp Niar Pool, in Generation 713


End file.
